Ikea even surprised me this time.

When you log onto Pottery Barn Kids, Land Of Nod, Restoration Hardware baby&child, and Babies R Us looking for bedding, you’ll have to pick between girl bedding or boy bedding. Some sites have “neutral” nursery bedding, but the classification seems to go away once the child has moved on from the crib (I presume because the stores are catering to those who don’t wish to know the sex of their child; once the child is born, we know their sex (presumably) and so we usher those parents to the boys or girls club.)

A few themes seem to crop up again and again. Little boys get: cars, trucks, baseball, football, soccer, spaceships, trains, airplanes, and dinosaurs, in shades of blue and red. Little girls get: flowers, butterflies, royalty, mermaids and ballerinas, in shades of purple and pink.

The reality is that our little girls and little boys are growing up in a real world, where the big girls and big boys both play soccer, where dump trucks rumble down the street in a terrific roar, where twirling around in a tutu really is super fun, where grandmas fly on airplanes, and butterflies flit through forests. Their likes and dislikes encompass everything the world has to offer, reflecting the complex little beings they are. Our little girl likes trains and birds, dump trucks and party dresses.

So, you can imagine how excited I was to stumble onto to Ikea’s children’s bedding collections.

Here, a red train set crosses over a pink duvet. Do you know how hard it is to find anything pink with a train on it?

Dragons appear in purples, pinks, blues, and greens. Birds are everywhere.

There is a princess duvet.

Note that the princess is wearing a tool belt with hammer and ruler. She is surrounded by pink dump trucks and a purple front loader.

I really appreciate what Ikea is doing. It’s not that everything is gender neutral — I don’t think that’s the solution. But it’s giving at least our little girls options. They can pick purple butterfly bedding, but they can also have purple dump truck bedding.

I’d be interested to hear what the parents of little boys think. So much of the gender toy, clothes, and bedding discussion revolves around little girls, and I have a little girl so that’s my focus too. What’s been your experience?